Hunter Out, Rutter In, Is XRCO Next?

Who’s going next in the AVN purge? Today in a shocking turn of events it was Tod Hunter, a veteran of six years at the magazine. Tomorrow it may be Mike Ramone and the XRCO. Stuff that I’m hearing on the street is that Ramone is certainly a possibility. And with Hunter going out, and Adam Film World’s Jared Rutter coming through the revolving door to replace him, there’ll be too many chiefs and not enough Indians at the happiest trade magazine on earth. Rutter, you can bet your bottom dollar, isn’t coming in with the mere title of writer. Which leaves Ramone’s future certainly cloudy at best.

That’s because it’s a well-known, but certainly unpublicized fact that when Tim Connelly took over the reigns of the magazine earlier this year, Ramone was ready to be given his walking papers but begged for his job by agreeing to a salary cut. Ramone, similar to Hunter, had been offered an Adam Film World spot, but refused, thwarting the opportunity to bring Rutter over that much sooner. So someone had to go. That someone being Hunter who was never looked on favorably by the hierarchy. Paul Fishbein wanted to fire Hunter years ago on a mere whim but I stepped in and offered a pretty persuasive argument- at least I thought- why the man was an asset to the organization.

When it was speculated that Rutter would eventually be asked to come on board, it opened up another interesting kettle of fish. I made it known at the time that AVN was attempting either a takeover of XRCO or the elimination of that group in order to have the only awards show in town, or, at the very least, control over both of them. AVN’s absorption of Rutter pretty much suggests that either of those two scenarios are now quite plausible.

Meanwhile, Hunter has been offered the Ramone scenario to consider, that is, taking Rutter’s position over at Adam Film World. An odd deal to make to someone who had just been fired, don’t you think? Hunter, we’re told, was let go because he seemed “bored.” A pretty lame explanation which gives Tod at least something in common with the late actor George Sanders whose suicide note declared that he killed himself because he was bored.